


Residue

by staranise



Category: Flashpoint
Genre: Cuddling and Snuggling, Episode Tag, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-17
Updated: 2010-05-17
Packaged: 2017-10-09 12:36:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/87576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staranise/pseuds/staranise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam spends the night.  Episode tag for 2x12, "Clean Hands"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Residue

Jules already knows about the standoff at the airport, because he called her on the way back to explain.  It was then that he asked permission—or begged forgiveness—to come over, so she knew he was on his way.

He's read stories written by people who have never had to kill, about the first time they ever caused somebody to die.  There are supposed to be catalogued results: exultation, nausea, arousal, distaste.  Each one is supposed to say something about you, about what kind of person you are.

Jules and Sam are mechanical people: they pulled the trigger, and did the next thing, and finished the mission.  Shrugged off concern from their peers, stripped off their jackets, and thought, _I just killed somebody._

_I wonder how I'm supposed to feel about that._

So she takes him at face value when he tells her that he almost died, and knows exactly how ugly it would have been, but it's okay.

Therefore: he parks his car at the community league a block from her house, and dodges uncertain paving in an alley full of trashcans to get to her back door.  The little chain-link gate needs repair, so he has to be careful in setting it back on its latch; if he asks, Jules will probably tell him she's putting in something newer, better, and twelve feet high.

The door is unlocked for him, but he has to key a code into the alarm.  She's in bed.  He looks around her kitchen, trying to make things out from the shadows the streetlight casts, but this time there's no pizza box to steal from, in the mess of tubs of drywall mud and rolls of painter's tape on the kitchen table.

He ate before coming over, but it would be nice, he thinks, to get more used to eating Jules's leftovers.

If she doesn't need them she'll punch him for picking up a medicine cup in her bathroom and doling three pills out of the medicine bottle in her sink, but he knows at three am she'll wake up whimpering, and at the very least he'll find the Percocet on the bedside table by touch, and she'll dry-swallow it and sleep deeply.

Jules is in bed, when he comes in.  She pretends like she's been asleep until he woke her up, but the back of her TV's warm, like she turned it off the moment he opened the door.  He leans over her curled-up form to kiss her cheek, then sits at the side of the bed and starts shrugging clothing off.

"Go alright?" she asks, her voice always so small in private conversation.

"Fine," he says, folding his clothes and leaving them in a small pile by the nightstand.  He's not going to tell her how Donna's doing, because until she can lift weights again she's always going to worry about who's replacing her and whether she'll ever get back.  "You need anything?"

"No."  It's muffled and sulky and really means yes, but she won't take anything for it.

"You don't take care of yourself, you'll never get better," he tells her.  She rolls over to regard him resentfully, but his response is just to lean over and kiss her again.

 She's clutching a heatpack to her chest, which means the wound aches.

But even still, after that, when he gets into bed she comes close to him, putting a hand and her forehead against his chest, and holds him.  It makes his mouth taste something strange, like hope and a sigh that doesn't escape, and he rests his lips against her hair.

Clean hands, it isn't.  But it's theirs.


End file.
